Eater (22 page)

Kingsley quickly realized the next morning that to the bureaucratic mind, the most pressing matter would, of course, be the assigning of blame.

This fell to an assortment of U Agency types. These in the general Executive Committee meeting used “It is believed” rather than “I think,” theorists who said “It has long been known,” when they meant “I can’t remember who did this,” or stated portentously “It is not unreasonable to assume” instead of “Would you believe?” Those defending their ideas—the imported target specialists, DoD experts and the like, retreated into “It might be argued that,” which was a dead-on clue that it actually meant “I have such a good answer to that objection that I shall now raise it myself…” These were the same sort whose speech included “progressing an action plan” and “calendarizing a project.” Only painfully did it penetrate that the calendar here was set entirely by a being nobody understood.

Part of the problem in assigning responsibility was the swelling numbers of Center consultants, U Agency staff, assorted specialists, and the like. More moved in as the possibility of communications failure grew. The Eater might chop the human digital networks with a single swipe.

In the end, there was plenty of blame to go around.

All Earth’s telescopes and diagnostics, concentrated upon the comparatively tiny region of a few hundred kilometers
around the rapidly decelerating Eater’s core, saw much that no one comprehended. The huge energies of the three warheads had sent great plumes of high temperature plasma into the magnetic geometry, all right. But somehow it flowed along the field lines and then into the accretion disk. More fuel for the Eater of All Things.

“The Eater ate them,” Amy Major observed laconically. “And like us all, eating makes you bigger.”

It had swelled, become more luminous. In the next few hours, the Eater crossed the remaining half a million kilometers to Earth, bearing in on a spiral orbit.

Kingsley watched the U Agency break down into factions that fed upon each other. Outside the Center battalions of newsfolk demanded answers. Washington already knew that, fundamentally, there were none. The Eater said nothing about the attack, until two hours later:

“Looks like a signature,” Arno commented to the Semiotics Group.

“But what’s it mean?” a voice called, and others chimed in:

“The ultimate?”

“Should be singular.”

“It says ‘my-selves,’ though.”

“So it’s what? An anthology intelligence?”

“Like Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?”

“Don’t be humorous about that!”

“About life and death? Laughing is best.”

“Ultimate as in final? Fatal?”

“Maybe it’s the plural of ultimatum.”

This last from a University of Oklahoma professor sent a chill through the room.

Later, secluded in his office, Arno asked the old working group of Martinez, Amy, Benjamin, and Kingsley if they thought these were reasonable readings. Amy said, “It knows dozens of languages by now. Choosing a name like that—well, it proves it’s learned how to pun.”

“To underline that it wishes its demand for specific persons obeyed,” Kingsley said.

Amy said, “There’s a Mesh story that says they’re reading the sections of Einstein’s brain that were in formaldehyde.”

“Lots of luck deciphering that,” Benjamin said.

Amy waved the Einstein matter away as a stunt, but then said earnestly, “There are thousands of specialists working on the whole uploading problem. They’re learning every day. If we have to give it all those people, the technology will be ready.”

Arno asked her, “How many volunteers?”

“Real ones? A few dozen.”

Arno looked startled. “But the Mesh says there are already over ten thousand.”

“That’s counting captive ‘volunteers’ from dictators.”

“How about reading in the brains of those just dead?” Arno pressed. “There are eight billion people on Earth. Dying at a rate of better than a hundred thousand every
day
—”

“Everybody’s resisting that,” Amy said briskly. “Most aren’t anywhere near a facility that has the equipment. And anyway, the magnetic sensing process takes several days, minimum. Dying patients aren’t up to it, and their readings get screwed up, too.”

“The Eater doesn’t know that,” Arno said.

Kingsley said, “Not so. It samples all our radio and TV. It can eavesdrop on a great welter of talk.”

Amy seemed more energetic than the men here, and Kingsley marveled again at how she had become steadily
stronger as this crisis developed. That had first drawn him to her, the sheer sense of untapped energy. She had an appetite for detail, for stitching together the innumerable Eater messages, then shopping them out to the working groups—all the while remaining a warm, insightful woman, not an office automaton, as did so many of both sexes in these fear-fraught days.

“I…see.” Arno’s former spotless attire had eroded. His suit was unpressed, tie askew, shoes unpolished—all mirroring his wrecked face, which was not used to receiving a serving of unremitting bad news. No sleep and pressure from above had not been kind. “Well, at least we’ve solved the question of who was after Kingsley.”

This made Kingsley brighten. “How is old buddy Herb?”

“Conscious, finally. He’ll recover. He was from the China-option faction, I found out.”

“Trying to silence opponents?” Kingsley guessed.

“They wanted you in hand to control reactions and help with follow-up targeting,” Arno said.

This startled them all. “They planned on failing?” Amy asked.

“Any good general has a retreat in mind,” Arno said. “They wanted to hit it several times, overload it.”

Kingsley guessed again, “But didn’t say so to the President.”

“Seems so,” Arno said. “He overruled that, of course. If they’d had you to head up the advocates, maybe they’d have won, be slugging it out with the Eater right now.”

Benjamin said angrily, “Inside our satellite belt? That would skragg all our communications.”

“Yep,” Arno said blandly. “I’m getting so nothing surprises me, even from Washington.”

“The pronuke faction is vanquished, then?” Kingsley asked.

“Not at all.” Arno grinned cynically. “They just sit in the back of the room now.”

“Ah, politics,” Amy said.

Arno’s screen beeped and a priority message appeared, more from the Eater:

“Cryptic son of a bitch, isn’t it?” Arno prodded them.

“Sounds ominous,” Benjamin said.

“Think so? It hasn’t even taken notice of what we did.” Arno’s eyes darkened with worry.

“All this time,” Benjamin asked, “it’s been carrying on dozens of conversations with specialists, as though nothing happened?”

“Right.” Arno thumbed a control. “Here’s one that got booted to me. Goes to motives, maybe.”

“So it does know how to toss off a compliment,” Amy said sardonically.

“At least that’s positive,” Arno said a touch defensively.

“I think a bit of physics may be a better guide here than amateur psychoanalysis of an alien mind,” Kingsley said.

“You mean its refueling problem,” Amy said.

“Quite. It has shed so much energy to slow its prodigious velocity, to get into orbit just above us. Why we do not know, beyond its demands. Still, if it is ever to leave, it must gain mass.”

“From where?” Arno asked. “The President wants a list of possibilities from us.”

“And options for further action?” Kingsley asked dryly.

“Yes—and right away.”

“That’ll be due to the prodding of the Science Adviser.”

Arno nodded. “It’ll be in a nearly circular orbit soon, the trajectory guys project. What will it do then? It can’t actually run right into the planet, you all say—”

“Its capabilities are beyond our horizons,” Benjamin said.

“The easiest mass to harvest,” Amy put in, “is our upper atmosphere. Nice and diffuse, ionized on contact.”

This startled Arno. “It would do that? So close to us—”

“It apparently believes itself of a vastly different and superior order, in the biological sense,” Kingsley observed distantly. “And probably of a different moral order, as well.”

The next few hours proved this to be so.

The Eater began to skate across the top of the atmosphere, skimming over two hundred kilometers high.

Its braking had lit the sky with a many-colored glow rivaling the sun. Vast clouds fumed where its deceleration jet struck the air. It had knifed through the thin upper air in a virulent red firework—aerobraking on a scale vastly beyond the puny spacecraft that humanity had sent into the atmospheres of Mars and Jupiter.

It was like a cannonball tens of miles across, Kingsley thought as he watched the seething display on the big screens. Devouring the air in its wake and using this grist to feed its braking jet. Tunneling through the sky.

In its wake the air closed again. This sent monstrous bass thunderclaps rolling down across whole continents.

The entire Center population emptied onto the surrounding hills to see the thing rise over the western Pacific. The security officers tried but could hardly contain them, over a thousand strong. In the slanting afternoon light, it was easily visible, a radiance that paled the sunlight.

It was already supping of the rarefied gas at that altitude, steadily lowering further, circling the planet in under three hours now.

It seemed to Kingsley like a great spiderweb of innumerable strands. Its looping, dipolar pattern was a brittle blue, laced with flickering orange and yellow spikes as electrody
namic forces worked through it. A snarl of angry purple marked where the leading jet somehow sucked ionized air into the knotted muzzle of tight field lines.

“Bet it’s hungry,” Amy said.

“Ah, but for what?” Kingsley answered. It came off as more brittle Brit wit, but he meant it earnestly. It had not come here to sample the air, perhaps not even to sample humanity.

He put an arm around her and she nuzzled him, body trembling. He was surprised to feel in her a quaking fear, expressed entirely in body language. So much for the sharp façade.

He, on the other hand, was far better at the stiff-upper-lip act, in fact had done something like that façade—he now felt, suddenly—all through his life. Pretending to be meaner than he in fact was, for starters. He was thinking about this, intently, when he saw Benjamin standing nearby and regarding them with genuine surprise.

Well, they hadn’t been secretive about it, just private. And what was a man to do at such a time, in any case?

Benjamin came over and stood awkwardly, obviously not wanting to broach the subject of Amy and yet not wanting to let it go. Kingsley felt a burst of affection for this man, who had endured so much these last few months. But he was no good at expressing such emotions, either. They stood next to each other in the strange, sudden silence that had descended upon the hills all around.

The Eater grew in scale as it passed overhead, unfolding more luminous blue field lines.

These peeled off from the web, lit—or so a Center astrophysicist nearby speculated—by excited oxygen lines as already ionized atoms were caught and compressed by field tensions. It behaved precisely like a beast unfurling great magnetic wings.

At its edge began a medley of glows—yellow, ivory, a satiny green. An atmospheric chemist nearby estimated that this came from its processing of nitrogen and oxygen, the
air’s two principal gases, in different molecular states. The fretting of light gave the crowd a better view of the size of the thing and gasps came from the crowds. It revolved slowly, as though basking in this bath.

“Thin gruel,” Kingsley said.

Only then did he realize the sensation of heady lightness that had been building in him for several moments. An airy lifting.

A creaking came from trees nearby. The crowd stirred like wheat blown by a wind. A shuddering started to come up through his feet. He felt uneasy, then comprehended—

“It’s tide. The Eater’s mass is raising a tide on the surface of the Earth.”

Amy gasped. The sense of lifting strengthened as the Eater neared the peak of the sky, drawing them toward it.

“It’s the mass of a moon, orbiting just a few hundred kilometers away,” Amy said wonderingly.

The crowd sighed. There was no other word for it. A collective easing as gravity ebbed for a moment. Kingsley felt a release from the burden of weight, stirring his blood at a fundamental level. How like a god…

Then they all simply stood and
felt
.

Awe, Kingsley recalled, was a mingling of fear and reverence. Probably few watching from the moist, warm slopes believed in God, but the press of foreboding wonder upon these people was palpable.

The most unexpected aspect of the moment was the thing’s monstrous beauty. It rotated again, this time around a different axis. A spew of fire-red brilliance came suddenly from the very center of it, where lurked the accretion disk. The fine field lines of the new jet worked with amber light, extending itself out of the mesh of bruised brilliance. The slow rotation began bringing the jet to point toward the planet’s surface.

The first atoms from Earth’s air have sputtered down onto the disk
, Kingsley guessed.
Can the jet be preparing to raise the orbit already
? The disk was a mere bright scarlet dot.
Hopeless to glimpse the black dot that was the cause of it all, but he tried anyway and failed.

“‘Gruel’?” Benjamin said in a croak. “It can convert maybe ten percent of the mass-energy of what it grabs. Mc
²
is a big number, even from thin air, if it’s getting spent in your own neighborhood.”